The death of the “gamers” and the women who “killed” them

I really don't get the defensive hate toward Anita Sarkeesian. Don't like her analysis of an issue? Fine. The internet is FULL of flawed analyses of why the Mustang is better than the Camaro (vice versa), Obamacare is good or bad, the latest Samsung Galaxy is better or worse than the iPhone, etc.

BUT THESE ARGUMENTS TYPICALLY DON'T END IN RAPE THREATS AND DEATH THREATS.

I don't care if people think that Anita Sarkeesian's analyses are off-base and wrong (I personally think some are correct, some aren't). Regardless of what you think, the rape and death threats are bullshit, and anyone here knows anyone participating in that stuff, you should flame the hell out of them. Or call the cops on them. Or something.

For fuck's sake, someone threatened to kill her parents (and provided their address as proof of the seriousness of the threat) because she said some video games contain some crappy content.

When you expose yourself to MILLIONS of people, by going online with your ideas, expect to get an incredibly wide array of responses, because when you gather that many peoples attention, some of them will actually be rapists and murders, right? Not saying the person who threatened was either, but you understand what I am saying. On the internet, you will find EVERYONE. Child rapists, serial killers, mentally insane people, etc, etc...

With high visibility like some have on the internet, I would be shocked if they had not yet received death threats, and rape threats. This goes for both men and women. People are crazy,and they are out there, and they say... Crazy shit.

Men do not remotely get the same kind of attack exposure that women get. (Similar things could be said about white men versus some non-white men or other such vs-style comparisons, but in this particular subculture--gaming--gender/sexuality issues dominate).

Research on this (and I mean serious, rigorous, academic research, not blog speculation) is almost trivial to find.

If the videos are focused on some strange subset of outliers that don't represent games as a whole, it seems like it would be trivial to post up a video of all the solid, well-rounded female characters that are being ignored. Why haven't I seen that video instead of multi-hour deconstructions of minor turns of phrase irrelevant to the core of the argument (e.g. the "in hitman u kill the woman, she's not just a corpse!!").

For your hitman reference, people were upset that she claimed that the game rewarded the player (and that in fact the scene was based around) killing the dancers and messing around with the corpses, which is a blatent lie. Killing ANYONE in that game that isn't a target is heavily penalized.

She's also, on many occasions, taken footage directly from a "Lets Play!" video, and commented on that footage, which heavily implies she hasn't actually played the game herself (where DID that $160k go btw). She blatent ignores the MANY strong, independent female characters, and seems to claim that violence in videogames against men is perfectly OK, but against women is 10000% off limits. Part of her slogan is "conversations with pop culture", but immediate claims anyone who disagrees with her is a misogynist or is harassing her.

She takes games from a time where males were almost exclusively the gaming audience (aka any time before 2006), and complains about how they fulfill a male fantasy. You know, the fantasy of the extreme majority audience. She's even cited ATARI GAMES THAT HAD SALES IN THE 10s as proof of misogyny in gaming culture.

"The post, comprised of narcissistic analysis mixed in with screenshots of several online conversations, exposed many personal details about Quinn irrelevant to her profession or professional conduct."

If this is irrelevant, why do you bring it up? Furthermore, why call it narcissistic? That's a pretty mighty attack against a person who, by your own words, isn't relevant to the story.

The details about Quinn are irrelevant. The fact that the blog post exposed the details is relevant. See the difference?

"The post, comprised of narcissistic analysis mixed in with screenshots of several online conversations, exposed many personal details about Quinn irrelevant to her profession or professional conduct."

If this is irrelevant, why do you bring it up? Furthermore, why call it narcissistic? That's a pretty mighty attack against a person who, by your own words, isn't relevant to the story.

But whatever, we'll let this one slide.

Let's talk about the bigger issue: The fact that she helped to shut down a game design competition for women.

http://www.thefineyoungcapitalists.com/Voting is the competition website.http://i.imgur.com/Gy2n50g.png The reddit post from the founder of the competition who states the competition was shut down because of Zoe Quinn harassing them. (Note: it's a screencap on imgur because reddit has been DELETING most comments about this story. In fact, the main thread has over 20k deleted comments because we're not allowed to talk about it.)

And, just so everyone is aware, Conde Nast owns both reddit and arstechnica.

The really funny thing is that people who want us, the gaming audience, to focus on games and designers are the same ones who bring up the fact that women aren't / don't / will not get the same opportunities as men in this field. They're the ones who want to focus on the imbalance of the sexes, and not the fact that great games involve both sexes, and have for a long time. WHY CAN'T WE JUST FOCUS ON THE ART, AND NOT THE ARTISTS??

To be honest, I think it's really simple. Thousands of games are made yearly - by both men and women. The biggest titles have people from both/(all?) sexes working to make great games that shape how we see games - and our lives. SOME people need a way to get more attention to their projects, and so they drum up a shitstorm. Others come up with unique or innovative ways to gain attention.

Zoe Quinn got attention from this - and the popularity of her name and game soared.

Remember when there wasn't this sort of antipathy towards each other because everyone was assumed to be a dude online? Even Casey, in her article, admits there is a "STEREOTYPICAL GAMER." I'd love to hear her defend her idea of this stereotype - or rather how she can use this verbage at all in article arguing for equal treatment of all sexes online and ingame.

Finally, I'd like to end with this: When I first starting reading this site, the information on it was of much better quality. I used to learn things from reading your content. Now, I just get pissed off every time a linkbait article is posted. Kyle Orlund did an article on Depression Quest which is terrible. Why was it reviewed? Was it groundbreaking in any way? Or, in other words, would he have even known about it without this Zoe Quinn catastrophy?

Please add me to your IP ban list. I no longer wish to view this site.

Joined the comments to say the same, from the responses here, its clear that any options that differ from 'company' policy are quickly down-voted and removed from view. Arstechnica, more like the National Enquiretechnica. Even though my points clearly pointed out w/o victim blaming Miss Quinn's infidelity and sleeping within the industry (NOT FOR REVIEWS), and the absurd nature of this opinion piece show a clear decline of quality from Ars; before I go to -50 I leave you with this Garfield quote:

As a minority, this is where i where i draw the line. This is where i call out Casey Johnston on her complete incoherent bullshit. Here we we have one of the most perfect examples of yet another social justice advocate going around not only spewing blanket statements that everyone that criticizes Quinn is a misogynist but also a racist no less!

The fact is, many many of the top critics of Quinn have openly called for the end to the attacks on her sexual impropriety. But don't let that stop you, Polygon, Gamasutra and the few others that have posted nearly identical columns such as yours in a span of less than 4 hours. No "Quinnspiracy" huh?

A new low for Ars Technica. You might as well have just called me a filthy nigger and gotten it over with.

I'm sorry; what exactly is wrong with social justice?

Read it again. I just quoted why this brand of social justice, where ridiculous blanket statements, especially about race which has NOTHING to do with the subject is nothing short of fear mongering, fascism and even worse.

↓ Moderation: (show post)

Or maybe i need to write this out while buck-dancing and eating fried chicken.

It's interesting that the Hitman game is used for the image for this article. Youtube user Thunderf00t has a pretty detailed analysis of how she not only cherry picked the single scene from this game that might be objectionable, but found or created footage of someone playing the game in a way that no one ever plays it. From his description:

Quote:

The game "Hitman Absolute" has 20 missions. Of which one includes a strip club. Only 2 parts out of 7 in the mission involve dancers. So about 1 % of this game has strippers in. However if you watch the playthroughs, you will find NO ONE actually attacks or kills the strippers. This is because you are penalized for killing innocent people. I did eventually, after about 60 play throughs find someone who killed the guard and strippers, but they just shot them and moved on.

NO ONE viewed the game as Anita Sarkeesian represented it. That is no one got their kicks out of killing the strippers and dragging their bodies around. This does raise the question of where Anita got the footage for this. It seems reasonable that she was directly responsible (in one form or another) for killing the strippers and dragging their bodies around so she could be outraged at what she had just manufactured. (I could find NO footage of where anyone did this... and I went through about 60 playthrus)

Sexism IS an issue in gaming, make no mistake. But this kind of blatant misrepresentation makes it difficult to have an honest debate about the level of sexism in gaming and what to do about it. It puts the focus on the misrepresentation as opposed to actual sexism in gaming and what to do about it.

[quote="[url=http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=27482949#p27482949]]Yes, some of them may give solutions to the problem but they never really fully try to solve the gender issue or for that matter even try 100% to solve the issue.

What on earth does this even mean? A marginalized group isn't allowed to assert itself until it can come up with a 10-point CBO-approved legislative agenda?

[quote="[url=http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=27482949#p27482949]]I feel like those that are speaking very loudly like Anita Sarkeesian really only care about the money because of that very fact that they are not really trying to come up with actual solutions to the problem.[/quote]

I don't think I've come across such a non-sequitur in while. She's not "coming up with solutions" therefore logically she must "only care about the money" Who exactly rises to level of a plaintiff in your opinion? Do you think getting hammered with gender-specific death-threats is something that we're all better off ignoring?[/quote][/quote]

This. It reminds me of an essay in Jerry Farber's most famous book (can't say the title in polite company). He explains in painstaking detail how teachers and other authority figures silence a habit of dissent in children and other living things by continually accusing them of complaining about how things are without being able to provide a solution. But if something's wrong, screaming "this is wrong, stop it" is a valid thing to do. Having a solution is not a prerequisite to pointing out a problem.

I think I liked it better when Lori Ann Cole and Roberta Williams were the most recognizable women in gaming. A crowd funded journalist with a chip on her shoulder and a developer with a published game under her belt, that will be rapidly overshadowed by this shit storm, much make for comparatively crappy heroes.

Unfortunately Williams's company is now owned by a company with their own double handful of gender issues.

It sucks being worried to drop a few names of people doing good work in the gaming industry at the moment out of fear they'd be dragged into this mess.

Between the reactions to Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian (and I am not referring to any legitimate criciticism, which of course, there is) and the SWATting incidents, I am pretty much convinced a significant chunk of the gaming community are sociopaths.

I'd just like to point out that Facebook has already proven that the anonymity part of the equation is completely irrelevant. People will post vile shit under their real names without a second thought.

The lack of face-to-face interaction is probably a bigger culprit. Even then, what seems to really happen is that the lack of inhibition brings out peoples' true selves, rather than creating an entirely new, fucktarded persona.

Although, my main issue with Anita Sarkeesian, like many other pro-femists, is that they just talk and talk about the issue. Yes, some of them may give solutions to the problem but they never really fully try to solve the gender issue or for that matter even try 100% to solve the issue. I feel like those that are speaking very loudly like Anita Sarkeesian really only care about the money because of that very fact that they are not really trying to come up with actual solutions to the problem.

How can they suggest solutions when the first problem is getting people to recognize that there is a problem? They don't agree that there is, so they're certainly not going to entertain solutions to a problem they don't see.

And your accusation about their greed is only speculation. Even if they're making millions off these videos, they still have a case to argue.

Legitimate criticism of Anita Sarkeesian has little to do with her gender and a hell of a lot more to do with shoddy methods, lack of citation, blatant cherry-picking of data, and her lack of any real two-way dialog with people who respectfully disagree with her.

Thanks for the opinion piece, this type of article has no place on ars.

-Signed, A woman doing something for how women are perceived instead of playing the victim card like Miss Johnston

Not that I agree with all the above, but it makes for an interesting jumping-off point on this story. The first great irony here -- apparently unremarked-upon by Ars or anyone else that I have seen at the Gawker empire -- is that Sarkeesian has overtaken her own criticism with herself as the center of a new and different story. This has at least two major advantages for her:

1) She can subsequently point to this episode and claim how unreasonable her critics are (while ignoring any who are not).2) It provides yet another nifty fundraising pitch.

However, in doing so, she acts as the victim, a damsel in distress who needs saving, the second great irony of this story. It is exactly one of the tropes she objected to in video games, and yet she plays it out in real life. While I don't for a moment think death threats should be taken lightly, her repeated wading into this swamp makes me wonder if this isn't a schtick with an obvious and built-in payoff.

When people threaten to rape her and kill both her and her loved ones, and they publish her address online, she isn't acting as a victim, she is one.

Woah there young man and cool your socks. Women are never victims, they are inherently responsible for the actions and thoughts of men and as such anything negative that happens to them is of their own making...she also probably dressed provocatively. You know what those damn women are like.

I'm asking for positive representations of women in games. If the videos are all selecting from some weird subset of games while wholesome alternatives are ignored I would consider "cherry-picking" valid.

While I agree that the representation of women in gaming has historically been atrocious, it is improving slowly.

Look at games like the Tomb Raider reboot, where Lara Croft is now a believable, rounded character with real development. She's pretty, but not pointless eye candy. We've come a long way from people discussing boob physics in TR games.

Sadly, games where *all* characters are well written and believable are few and far between, but as the idea of game story has become more important, so the idea that characters, including female characters, have to be more believable.

There are other examples out there, and things are improving. Projects like Sarkeesan's are important to help maintain the focus, but it's broader than the representation of women in games. Characters in games have to be improved across the board. Male characters need some complexity (Rambo is currently the most common male game character), even though female characters need it more.

I'm asking for positive representations of women in games. If the videos are all selecting from some weird subset of games while wholesome alternatives are ignored I would consider "cherry-picking" valid.

Exactly. While there are exceptions, they're exceptions and not the rule. For every FemShep or Ellie (TLOU) or Lindy Cohen I can think of (exceptions to the general rules she argues exist), I can think of dozens or hundreds of God of War-esque sex objects/victims/both (which absolutely fit into the general rules she argues exist).

Not everyone who disagrees with Anita Sarkeesian or finds the chain of events regarding Zoe Quinn highly suspect is a mouthbreathing misogynist, you know.

HEY NOT ALL MEN DO THAT YOU KNOW.

Yes, you fucking mouthbreather, we /know/ that.

Then why does any legitimate discussion about the faults in Anita's arguments get drowned out?

Because1) nobody gives a shit2) she got fucking death and rape threats for giving her opinion, because she's a woman, and many other women have this experience online.

No matter how much you'd like to change the subject so it's about her opinions and their merits, that's completely fucking irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you don't want to discuss the sociopathy in the gaming community, that's what we're here to discuss and that's what's important.

It's interesting that the Hitman game is used for the image for this article. Youtube user Thunderf00t has a pretty detailed analysis of how she not only cherry picked the single scene from this game that might be objectionable, but found or created footage of someone playing the game in a way that no one ever plays it. From his description:

Quote:

The game "Hitman Absolute" has 20 missions. Of which one includes a strip club. Only 2 parts out of 7 in the mission involve dancers. So about 1 % of this game has strippers in. However if you watch the playthroughs, you will find NO ONE actually attacks or kills the strippers. This is because you are penalized for killing innocent people. I did eventually, after about 60 play throughs find someone who killed the guard and strippers, but they just shot them and moved on.

NO ONE viewed the game as Anita Sarkeesian represented it. That is no one got their kicks out of killing the strippers and dragging their bodies around. This does raise the question of where Anita got the footage for this. It seems reasonable that she was directly responsible (in one form or another) for killing the strippers and dragging their bodies around so she could be outraged at what she had just manufactured. (I could find NO footage of where anyone did this... and I went through about 60 playthrus)

Sexism IS an issue in gaming, make no mistake. But this kind of blatant misrepresentation makes it difficult to have an honest debate about the level of sexism in gaming and what to do about it. It puts the focus on the misrepresentation as opposed to actual sexism in gaming and what to do about it.

This is my biggest problem with her: she's not making gaming as a whole better, she's making feminism as a whole worse.

Thanks for the opinion piece, this type of article has no place on ars.

-Signed, A woman doing something for how women are perceived instead of playing the victim card like Miss Johnston

Not that I agree with all the above, but it makes for an interesting jumping-off point on this story. The first great irony here -- apparently unremarked-upon by Ars or anyone else that I have seen at the Gawker empire -- is that Sarkeesian has overtaken her own criticism with herself as the center of a new and different story. This has at least two major advantages for her:

1) She can subsequently point to this episode and claim how unreasonable her critics are (while ignoring any who are not).2) It provides yet another nifty fundraising pitch.

However, in doing so, she acts as the victim, a damsel in distress who needs saving, the second great irony of this story. It is exactly one of the tropes she objected to in video games, and yet she plays it out in real life. While I don't for a moment think death threats should be taken lightly, her repeated wading into this swamp makes me wonder if this isn't a schtick with an obvious and built-in payoff.

When people threaten to rape her and kill both her and her loved ones, and they publish her address online, she isn't acting as a victim, she is one.

Woah there young man and cool your socks. Women are never victims, they are inherently responsible for the actions and thoughts of men and as such anything negative that happens to them is of their own making...she also probably dressed provocatively. You know what those damn women are like.

"The post, comprised of narcissistic analysis mixed in with screenshots of several online conversations, exposed many personal details about Quinn irrelevant to her profession or professional conduct."

If this is irrelevant, why do you bring it up? Furthermore, why call it narcissistic? That's a pretty mighty attack against a person who, by your own words, isn't relevant to the story.

The details about Quinn are irrelevant. The fact that the blog post exposed the details is relevant. See the difference?

Nope.

You can't have it both ways.

Either the blog and its contents are relevant, or they are not.

Are you kidding? It's often the case that commentary on irrelevancies is itself relevant. Perhaps you're trolling? Anyway, do yourself a favor and read up on NYT v. Sullivan on wikipedia or something. A monumentally important supreme court decision about a bullshit irrelevant lawsuit. The commentary is not the text. Never has been, never will be.

Legitimate criticism of Anita Sarkeesian has little to do with her gender and a hell of a lot more to do with shoddy methods, lack of citation, blatant cherry-picking of data, and her lack of any real two-way dialog with people who respectfully disagree with her.

I like that "respectfully disagree with her" part. Gave me a chuckle.

You are a liar.

Citation needed.

I agree. Let's see what those shoddy methods are, what references were not cited, what data was cherry-picked, and an explanation of how two-way dialog can be exercised in a crowd of belligerent conduct.

Not everyone who disagrees with Anita Sarkeesian or finds the chain of events regarding Zoe Quinn highly suspect is a mouthbreathing misogynist, you know.

HEY NOT ALL MEN DO THAT YOU KNOW.

Yes, you fucking mouthbreather, we /know/ that.

Then why does any legitimate discussion about the faults in Anita's arguments get drowned out?

Because1) nobody gives a shit2) she got fucking death and rape threats for giving her opinion, because she's a woman, and many other women have this experience online.

No matter how much you'd like to change the subject so it's about her opinions and their merits, that's completely fucking irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you don't want to discuss the sociopathy in the gaming community, that's what we're here to discuss and that's what's important.

Would I be incorrect in guessing that you're a straight white male?

Hate to break it to you, but I'm not. I'm actually a heteroflexible Hispanic male.

Alright then, this is one of the articles in question he wrote for one of his friendsThe article itself, nothing special. But anyone notice how many times he mentions Depression Quest?

-The title itself has the uncanny resemblance to Zoey's game (Depression Quest).-The only image given for all 50 greenlighted games is from Depression Quest.-It is listed as a game that stands-out, as being the first game to standout as well, powerful at that.-Depression quest is one of only two games tagged to the post, out of 50 games, why not tag all 50 so people can search for this article on the site.

Considering how games get coverage is more about how often you hear about it, rather than one review (even tho the first review is the most important review a game will ever receive)

The next time he wrote about Zoe, he was in a "relationship" after viewing her at some game con. The article about the failed Game Jam, he plugs his friend Zoe's Rebel Game Jam in the article for a website that was registered that day, it's like he didn't even have to do any research on when it was gonna happen. Their favoring only their friends, plugging their games, their donation links. I mean hell, we all know DQ would get a 10/10 review if one was ever written by this point.

Not everyone who disagrees with Anita Sarkeesian or finds the chain of events regarding Zoe Quinn highly suspect is a mouthbreathing misogynist, you know.

HEY NOT ALL MEN DO THAT YOU KNOW.

Yes, you fucking mouthbreather, we /know/ that.

Then why does any legitimate discussion about the faults in Anita's arguments get drowned out?

Because1) nobody gives a shit2) she got fucking death and rape threats for giving her opinion, because she's a woman, and many other women have this experience online.

....

Would I be incorrect in guessing that you're a straight white male?

so the fact that a relatively small percentage of her detractors are terrible people means that any debate / discussion on the (MANY) faults of her methods isn't going to happen? sounds like quite the echo chamber.

Although, my main issue with Anita Sarkeesian, like many other pro-femists, is that they just talk and talk about the issue. Yes, some of them may give solutions to the problem but they never really fully try to solve the gender issue or for that matter even try 100% to solve the issue. I feel like those that are speaking very loudly like Anita Sarkeesian really only care about the money because of that very fact that they are not really trying to come up with actual solutions to the problem.

How can they suggest solutions when the first problem is getting people to recognize that there is a problem? They don't agree that there is, so they're certainly not going to entertain solutions to a problem they don't see.

And your accusation about their greed is only speculation. Even if they're making millions off these videos, they still have a case to argue.

Shortly before or after her first video there was an interesting article by a comic book (I believe marvel) higher up doing just that. Essentially, she noted what the concern was (women representation in comic stories, she didn't get into labor), then elaborated as to how it was part of a broader concern, specifically how the problems were caused by lazy writing and a pure main character focus in those stories allowing for some characters to be tacked on with little background. By showing how this one issue was a sign that there was a larger failure in the writing, the issue could be addressed without the need for a Vs. discussion as everyone wants better writing, and you can use the short coming of heavily troped women to spot when the creation of a world was needlessly shallow.

On the other hand, that author didn't get read as widely as Sarkissian was watched, so the audience for her message may have been narrower than I thought.

I've watched the latest Women vs Tropes video , seen the comments and rebuttals and as well as being downright nasty it highlights what can only be classed as one if the internet's own tropes "Refute a detail, win the argument."

I've seen plenty of people claim Anita's ENTIRE video is false and blowing the situation out of proportion because that Hitman scene is meant to be avoided and to a lesser extent the Watch Dogs human trafficking mission is legit.

These "arguments" completely ignore the rest of the video which shows the broader picture of how females are presented in gaming and highlights numerous examples of casual sexual violence against women, domestic abuse and the sexualisation of dead females in comparison to males.

They argue that because the Hitman example, an example that barely lasts a minute, can be ignored it therefore means that Watch Dog having a repeating sidequest about a woman facing domestic abuse and eventual murder at the hand of her abuser and classes prevention as a failure is somehow now invalid as evidence of the trope.

I love that literally the next comment after yours is "refuting" the video as you said based on that Hitman section.

Wonderful.

I hadn't watched that video yet and now I have and I can't really see how someone can disagree with it in the general sense. The role of women in games is often as mere victims and that's what the video shows and honestly what anyone who has ever played a game should know. To be fair, I'd say this is more due to ineptitude in story telling with games in general rather than some overarching conspiracy by the patriarchy to normalize violence against women, as it seems to be the only method that games know how to evoke emotion and set a gritty atmosphere. I'm sure there are good examples too, but other than Alyx in Half-Life 2 none really come to mind right now. Games are generally still just ham-fisted in story telling and so quite naturally they reach for tired tropes like Damsel in Distress and Angry Male Thug.

A female neighbor used to work for a game company as a designer. The majority of her coworkers were men.

These men had a great time:

They placed cameras in the female restrooms.They hung porn on the office walls complete with obscene comments .There were monthly company "team building" dinners to which the women were not invited.One coworker hit on my neighbor, even though he knew she was married. He said "Your husband doesn't have to know."

When she complained to her boss she was told that she wasn't a team player, and the HR person suggested this might not be the best company for her. She found another job outside the game development industry.

It seems that many women in gaming companies have to put up with this sort of crap.

If the videos are focused on some strange subset of outliers that don't represent games as a whole, it seems like it would be trivial to post up a video of all the solid, well-rounded female characters that are being ignored. Why haven't I seen that video instead of multi-hour deconstructions of minor turns of phrase irrelevant to the core of the argument (e.g. the "in hitman u kill the woman, she's not just a corpse!!").

For your hitman reference, people were upset that she claimed that the game rewarded the player (and that in fact the scene was based around) killing the dancers and messing around with the corpses, which is a blatent lie. Killing ANYONE in that game that isn't a target is heavily penalized.

She's also, on many occasions, taken footage directly from a "Lets Play!" video, and commented on that footage, which heavily implies she hasn't actually played the game herself (where DID that $160k go btw). She blatent ignores the MANY strong, independent female characters, and seems to claim that violence in videogames against men is perfectly OK, but against women is 10000% off limits. Part of her slogan is "conversations with pop culture", but immediate claims anyone who disagrees with her is a misogynist or is harassing her.

She takes games from a time where males were almost exclusively the gaming audience (aka any time before 2006), and complains about how they fulfill a male fantasy. You know, the fantasy of the extreme majority audience. She's even cited ATARI GAMES THAT HAD SALES IN THE 10s as proof of misogyny in gaming culture.

Assuming we're going with 1961's Spacewar! as the first video game, lopping off history before 2006 means we're ignoring 80% of the medium's history. And 3 years of my Ars posting career as well. I don't think that's a useful bar to set. People who grew up on those games, worked with those same devs, and the cultures around those teams didn't magically poof in 2006.

As far as the pedantry around "penalization" in Hitman, I myself have willfully played a game in a way that did not maximize an arbitrary number attached to gameplay. If there's scripting around the event, it means the developers spent time and effort crafting the experience and simply tossing a negative effect on it, especially one not unique to that situation, makes me think it's rewarding to engage in this for a nontrivial amount of players.

Again, all this is tangential to my original request. Show me all these amazing post-2006 games with fully fleshed out women characters. It's quite pleasant to hear that TR has turned itself around! I would very much appreciate people posting more such examples.

Legitimate criticism of Anita Sarkeesian has little to do with her gender and a hell of a lot more to do with shoddy methods, lack of citation, blatant cherry-picking of data, and her lack of any real two-way dialog with people who respectfully disagree with her.

I like that "respectfully disagree with her" part. Gave me a chuckle.

You are a liar.

Citation needed.

I agree. Let's see what those shoddy methods are, what references were not cited, what data was cherry-picked, and an explanation of how two-way dialog can be exercised in a crowd of belligerent conduct.

Shoddy methods: Commenting on Let's Play videos (used without permission from the creator) for her videos and not playing the games herself.

Lack of citation: Anita references "studies" multiple times in her videos, but never provides a URL, a DOI number, or even a title in either her video or its description. For someone who claims to want her videos used as education materials in schools, this seems like a glaring oversight.

Cherry-picking data: Claiming that "objectification of women" in games leads to objectification of women in real life with no hard evidence to back this up, while also ignoring the complete lack of correlation between violence in video games and crime statistics. Vehicular homicide rates didn't rise when the first Grand Theft Auto was released, mas shootings didn't increase after every Battlefield or Call of Duty title was released, but mysoginy and objectification of women increases with games like Hitman: Absolution and GTA V?

Two-way dialog: There are plenty of level-headed people who disagree with Anita Sarkeesian; TotalBiscut is an prime example. Yet she makes no attempt to reach out to anyone, or engage with anyone, who disagrees with her.

[quote="[url=http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=27482949#p27482949]]Yes, some of them may give solutions to the problem but they never really fully try to solve the gender issue or for that matter even try 100% to solve the issue.

What on earth does this even mean? A marginalized group isn't allowed to assert itself until it can come up with a 10-point CBO-approved legislative agenda?

[quote="[url=http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=27482949#p27482949]]I feel like those that are speaking very loudly like Anita Sarkeesian really only care about the money because of that very fact that they are not really trying to come up with actual solutions to the problem.

I don't think I've come across such a non-sequitur in while. She's not "coming up with solutions" therefore logically she must "only care about the money" Who exactly rises to level of a plaintiff in your opinion? Do you think getting hammered with gender-specific death-threats is something that we're all better off ignoring?[/quote][/quote]

This. It reminds me of an essay in Jerry Farber's most famous book (can't say the title in polite company). He explains in painstaking detail how teachers and other authority figures silence a habit of dissent in children and other living things by continually accusing them of complaining about how things are without being able to provide a solution. But if something's wrong, screaming "this is wrong, stop it" is a valid thing to do. Having a solution is not a prerequisite to pointing out a problem.[/quote]

You are correct. Maybe my phrasing came about as harsh in some sense. Its just that I'm tired hearing the issue and shoving it down my throat all the time.Yes, we know there is a problem in the industry. Yes, we all know it is valid to some degree (who knows what degree that is) but has anyone come up with a solution? Does anyone really care to only speak about it so loudly? What about the phrase "action speaks louder than words"?

The only actions I have seen are speech but I truly want to see from Anita Sarkeesian is some form of action that truly tell me she wants things to change. I am probably not going to see that though from anyone and my expectations of people good will and morals are too damn high for any living man. The best example I have seen though of someone proving their actions to me about solving any issue though is actually creating a game.

I did say though I felt sorry for Anita receiving death threats but also rape threats and any other threats about towards her and her family. My opinion of her being a cherry picking jerk doesn't change though.

It's unfortunate the the trolls are making it personal but to be fair they go after everyone else too. John Smedley is about as far from spunky young female professional as it gets, it didn't stop them from diverting a damn airplane for the lulz. The GIFT is functionally rather gender-neutral, but I guess sexism sells better.

This. It reminds me of an essay in Jerry Farber's most famous book (can't say the title in polite company). He explains in painstaking detail how teachers and other authority figures silence a habit of dissent in children and other living things by continually accusing them of complaining about how things are without being able to provide a solution. But if something's wrong, screaming "this is wrong, stop it" is a valid thing to do. Having a solution is not a prerequisite to pointing out a problem.

You are correct. Maybe my phrasing came about as harsh in some sense. Its just that I'm tired hearing the issue and shoving it down my throat all the time.Yes, we know there is a problem in the industry. Yes, we all know it is valid to some degree (who knows what degree that is) but has anyone come up with a solution? Does anyone really care to only speak about it so loudly? What about the phrase "action speaks louder than words"?

The only actions I have seen are speech but I truly want to see from Anita Sarkeesian is some form of action that truly tell me she wants things to change. I am probably not going to see that though from anyone and my expectations of people good will and morals are too damn high for any living man. The best example I have seen though of someone proving their actions to me about solving any issue though is actually creating a game.

I did say though I felt sorry for Anita receiving death threats but also rape threats and any other threats about towards her and her family. My opinion of her being a cherry picking jerk doesn't change though.

You must be quite unfamiliar with academic discourse. This is what academics do. They analyze texts (in the broad sense, which includes video games) and then comment on them. They don't have to say how to fix the problems that the texts exemplify. Read 400 years of Shakespeare criticism for examples. Sarkeesian's work is run-of-the-mill academic analysis. Gamers evidently aren't familiar with the genre she works in, but that genre, media criticism, doesn't require proposed solutions to anything.

I think these guys serve a role a bit like the Westboro Baptist Church. Repulsive, but extremely effective in demonstrating the larger truth of what the people they attack are saying.

You can argue with some of Anita's points or methods, but in the end there's nothing quite as effective as her most rabid opponents at proving that gaming has a problem. I don't think Tropes vs Women would have been anywhere near as effective as they have been if they had been received calmly - mostly because few people are going to bother watching anything 20+ minutes long these days. Most comments on the new videos seem to be 'screw it, going right to comments' (comment time: 2 minutes after post goes up).

But gaming doesn't have a problem it's the internet which allows this I see these same attacks on women over comic's and film/TV all the time on the internet. There was one about a Spider Woman comic cover were a women criticised the overly erotic nature and she was threatened with rape and death threats in comments/twitter etc.

Those who play CoD/Fifa/Madden are not on the internet harassing people.

Those who play mobile games and made King and Rovio billions are not on the internet harassing people.

It's arseholes who scour the internet for reasons to harass women over every possible subject.

I would like to point out that in both cases the victim repeated the exact words of the attacker to the public at large to attempt to shame. This is not something any victim should do, especially when the public in this case (because of the Internet) could be millions of people. It will be seen as a retaliation and escalation by the person verbally attacking, and you will get responses from the attention of others that will only cause the abuse to grow.

The best thing to do with anyone verbally attacking you without cause is to simply ignore them. If the person escalates without any retaliation from you, then take it to an authority appropriate to the level of escalation but still do not respond.

Even if you respond and it does not come off as retaliation or escalation, it can still be see as affirmation.